Our Statement on the PlayEDH × CompetitiveEDH Merger
The PlayEDH team is aware of the recent statement released on Reddit and disseminated through Twitter, Discord, and other channels. The PlayEDH Team is deeply concerned by the serious allegations that have been made within the statement and rejects the depiction of events contained therein.
It is our intent to be transparent and to outline events in a fact-based manner. To that end, we intend to release all communications regarding the merger, including any agreements made, to a neutral third party for their review and subsequent public release of their findings. We have opted to allow this review in lieu of releasing screenshots of chat logs from Discord which may be manipulated or redacted to support a specific narrative, particularly as there have been concerns about this in the past.
The intent of the merger between PlayEDH and the CompetitiveEDH Discord has always been to make cEDH more accessible and to develop new features that have long been asked for by the community on the CompetitiveEDH server. Principle among these features are the commitment to having permanent free-to-play queues on both servers, a way to offer paid cEDH tournaments and events with prizes to people who are interested in participating in them, and a PlayEDH-funded cross-server functionality for SpellBot that is intended to be made available to the community at no cost once it has undergone sufficient practical testing. These things have remained our priority, with very little about playing games or participating on the CompetitiveEDH Discord server changing in any way.
The remainder of this statement will serve to illustrate a timeline of events that are documented by our communication.
August 2023:
Lerker, the head moderator of the CompetitiveEDH server, talks to members of the PlayEDH leadership team and expresses interest in forming some type of partnership with PlayEDH.
Lerker brokers a meeting with Natux, an admin of the CompetitiveEDH server, to discuss this topic in further detail as Natux was the most active member of the CompetitiveEDH admin team at this time. This begins a series of exchanges where Natux and Lerker expresses interest in the core features of the CompetitiveEDH remaining free-to-play. These features primarily include the cEDH SpellTable and Cockatrice queues.
October 2023:
Lerker, Natux, and pongo, a long-time member of the CompetitiveEDH team, meet with the PlayEDH team to discuss the viability of a merger. pongo mentions that Shaper, the owner of the CompetitiveEDH Discord server, may not be convinced of the merits of the merger.
There is ongoing discussion between the two teams. PlayEDH expresses workload concerns if a merger is to take place. Lerker and Natux agree that fixing things on the CompetitiveEDH server should be a proactive focus, and they agree to take things back to Shaper and IMOC, another admin on CompetitiveEDH.
January 2024:
The cEDH Nexus announces that it will be closing. In response to this, Natux engages with the PlayEDH team to discuss resuming merger discussions and seeing if IMOC and Shaper want to talk. pongo also participates in these discussions due to his familiarity with the teams.
Discussion continues, with PlayEDH agreeing that hosting tournaments and leagues with paid admission, which have been requested by CompetitiveEDH users for years, will be a viable way to subsidize their increased labor costs that will necessitate new hires.
February 2024:
A group discussion including Cryptic (a PlayEDH admin), Lerker, Natux, IMOC, pongo and Shaper starts. More concerns are brought up and both and both teams continue to talk about a prospective merger.
On February 4th, a voice call between Natux, IMOC, Shaper, Lerker, and Cryptic takes place to discuss the prospective merger.
On February 11th, a second voice call between this group and Sigi and Justin, who are the remaining PlayEDH admins. The outcome of this meeting is that both teams wish to pursue the merger in earnest and begin working together on specific details. The CompetitiveEDH team shares news of the merger plans with their team at this time, including the possibility of staff re-shuffling and asks for questions and concerns and a Discord server is set up to discuss the action plan and share information between both teams at a high level.
On February 12th, Cryptic talks with Shaper in that Discord server about server transfers, because both teams had agreed that a transfer of ownership would be part of the process due to PlayEDH putting monetary assets into supporting the merger and incurring financial liability. The nature of transferring ownership of a Partner-level Discord server requires working with Discord directly to approve the process.
On February 21st, a discussion of the status of the plan to transfer the server ownership takes place and both parties agree to move forward. Cryptic and Exxaxl, a team lead on PlayEDH, are given elevated permissions on the CompetitiveEDH server in the interim while the transfer process takes place.
Discussions take place regarding the ownership of accounts on Moxfield, Twitter, and other channels and determining if anything needs to be updated or passed from team to team.
On February 27th, the Club role is created on CompetitiveEDH that grandfathers in all original CompetitiveEDH staff into an advisory role with access to a specific server area with elevated access to staff to help with the transition and offer them a continued voice in the server long-term. IMOC says he will communicate this to all impacted users.
On February 28th, the server transfer is complete and Cryptic assumes the role of server owner. A divestment resolution is agreed upon where the merger will be reverted if PlayEDH considers it unsustainable or if both parties agree that a fail-state has occurred.
March 2024:
The teams begin working on things behind the scenes and staff are made aware that the merger has taken place and things will continue to move forward. All original CompetitiveEDH staff are informed that they will all have an opportunity to interview for paid staff positions if they choose to do so.
There are concerns about the previous moderation standards on the CompetitiveEDH Discord and it is acknowledged that there are many problematic or offensive text posts and memes that can be readily accessed in public channels. Due to Discord’s terms of service, it is agreed that this is a concern for any Partner-level server related to Patreon or other subscription services that would be used for tournaments and events.
On March 15th, an announcement is posted in both the PlayEDH and CompetitiveEDH servers regarding the merger and goes over things that can be expected moving forward.
On March 17th, IMOC shares a survey in the announcements channel on the CompetitiveEDH server that aims to collect feedback from the userbase. This survey is in the form of an unsecured Google form, which means that it is impossible to verify user participation or integrity of responses. The survey remains open for 72 hours and receives 177 responses with no definitive result that reflects a majority. It is agreed by both teams that the survey should not be used as a basis for forming opinions due to the relatively low response and lack of security.
The merger process continues, with some original CompetitiveEDH staff voicing some concerns.
On March 25th, IMOC issues an ultimatum demanding that the merger ends. The PlayEDH team asks for time to decide on a source of action and communicates that they will respond by April 1st. The same ultimatum is given by ShakeAndShimmy, the owner of the r/CompetitiveEDH subreddit and the former owner of the CompetitiveEDH Discord server who had given ownership of the server to Shaper years earlier.
On March 28th, IMOC resigns from his position on the PlayEDH team after agreeing that he was not meeting the standards outlined in his contract. The PlayEDH team accepts his resignation.
Sigi presents an alternative agreement for divestment that the PlayEDH team would be willing to entertain. This offer is rejected by Spleenface, another member of the original CompetitiveEDH team. The two continue to talk and ultimately can’t reach a concrete agreement by the agreed upon deadline.
April 2024:
On April 2nd, Cryptic announces the PlayEDH team’s intent to carry on with the merger while still seeking to resolve the situation with the CompetitiveEDH moderators who had issued an ultimatum.
The CompetitiveEDH staff seeking divestment make some offers that include language that the PlayEDH team feels implies intent to engage in a campaign to damage PlayEDH’s reputation if the offers are not accepted, which ultimately leads to a breakdown of negotiations.
A writer from Commander’s Herald known as Queen of Cardboard reaches out to the PlayEDH team for comment regarding the situation and is given access to all communications between both teams including audit logs for Discord. An article containing information obtained from both parties is published about the situation on April 4th.
On April 4th, ShakeAndShimmy posts the aforementioned Reddit thread.
Some members of the CompetitiveEDH team have been timed out in Discord or have stopped receiving communications from PlayEDH admins due to messages deemed as showing intent to damage PlayEDH. While our team does not wish to pursue any legal action at this time, it is standard procedure to disengage from people when presented with these types of offers or statements. We believe that this situation can be resolved without any such intervention.
The PlayEDH team plans to determine next steps following the review of all communications and agreements by the aforementioned neutral third party and the subsequent public release of their findings. The team remains committed to providing a positive solution for all involved.
